Allie Laabs

[email protected] | San Francisco Bay Area | GitHub: OverloadUT | LinkedIn: allielaabs

Summary

I make complex systems work for humans. 25+ years shipping products and internal services. I speak engineer as fluently as I speak business, learn faster than anyone expects, and figure out what's broken and fix it. Consistent independent work across all technical disciplines keeps my skills sharp. Deep expertise in AI/LLM integration and smart home systems.

Experience

Independent Technologist & Experience Designer (2024–ongoing)

Built custom AI-integrated interactive installations. Developed smart home systems for clients. Designed electronic systems for immersive theater.

Senior Technical Product Owner | Product Manager Autodesk (2018–2024)

Owned the licensing and compliance components that shipped inside every single Autodesk product. Ran monthly and quarterly "developer relations" presentations and office hours so product teams company-wide always had the support they needed, most crucially during the chaos of annual global product launches. The components serve millions of users across Autodesk's entire product portfolio, equally balancing the needs of B2B and B2C users.

Handled complex dependency chain management across dozens of teams and products. Translated between business requirements and engineering reality across all time zones while keeping shared components slim and efficient despite wildly different product needs.

Solutions Architect | Senior Technical Product Manager SolarCity → Tesla (2015–2018)

SolarCity (2015–2017): Owned the customer-facing software used to buy and manage solar panel systems. Championed and executed plan to re-design entire site based on customer research and unmet needs. Rearchitected the customer contact database schema and infrastructure, solving gnarly challenges with automatic geolocation and address de-duplication that were killing customer experience. Built complex customer acquisition systems including the entire technical infrastructure for the referral program.

Created custom JIRA workflows from scratch and rolled out scrum methodologies org-wide in a way that actually helped engineers rather than indulging in agile theater.

Post-acquisition at Tesla (2017–2018): Rearchitected the interactive in-store display system for browsing cars and configuring purchases. Solved for wildly different store requirements including intermittent Internet connectivity. Designed solutions for internal proof of concept projects for direct presentation to executive teams.

Earlier Roles (2002–2014, condensed)

• Product Marketing Manager — Smule: Created brand strategy for all brand, product, and community programs for apps with 125M+ users.

• Senior Manager, Community Programs — Trion Worlds: Oversaw social and product marketing strategy company-wide. Spearheaded strategic partnerships with brands and influencers. Where I learned the unique needs of SaaS and how to turn community in to revenue.

• Senior Community Manager — 2K Games: Created and executed community and social media strategy for 2K's AAA titles. Launched the first company-run Twitch channel when the industry thought livestreaming was just a fad. Where I discovered my inner stage performer.

• Build & Tools Engineer — 2K Sports: Internal dev tools, build pipelines, automation. Where I learned that good tooling makes or breaks everything.

• Associate Producer — Fluent Entertainment: Project management, user research, cross-functional leadership. Where I learned to translate between stakeholders who speak completely different languages.

Notable Technical Achievements

• Home Assistant open source contributor: Re-architected SQL database indexing and query structure to bring 100x performance boost. Overhauled major integrations and implemented new ones. (python, SQL)

• Immersive AI Tech Art: At a private event for Take 3 Presents, built a complex immersive art installation utilizing a novel approach to real-time AI interaction in a branching narrative system. (python, ableton, robotics)

• Electronic Prop Design: Designed and built custom electronic prop for immersive theater production Terror Vault. Full stack: 3D modeling, electonics, software, sound/lighting design. USB-C rechargable with reprogrammable behavior. (3d printing, python, electronics)

• Novel Continuous Integration System: At 2K Sports, long before the days where CI/CD became the norm, designed and built continuous integration software that powered the development teams across all products. (php)

What I bring to every job

• Rapid Domain Absorption: I learn new technical domains fast. Give me a week in your codebase, your industry, your problem space and I'll be your new expert.

• Systems Integration: Technical systems (APIs, databases, infrastructure), social systems (team workflows, stakeholder alignment), business systems (compliance, scaling, revenue). I make disparate parts work together.

• Translation at Scale: Equally fluent in engineering, business, marketing, product, and customer. I prevent projects from dying at the translation layer between teams.

• AI/LLM Implementation: Production integrations, workflow automation, and prompt engineering that actually works for real human problems. I stay current as this field evolves daily.

• Complex Problem Solving: I analyze what's broken and solve it. Database architecture, dependency chains, customer experience, interdepartmental communication. The more complex the problem, the more excited I am to deconstruct it.